LI Marathon/10K Recap

Welp, yes. I ran it. How could I have not?

I was feeling better. I was walking with barely a limp, barely a pain. I went on the treadmill for 1- 2 min 'jogs'  during the day yesterday, about 4-5 times. After every interval, I was painfree.
Up and down stairs were awesome.

I had made myself a calf roller. (Sports Authority wanted $30.00 for a 7 inch roller) No way.

I did some active release/trigger point massage until I thought my thumbs would crumble.

I thought, "I got this thing licked."

So happy!

Until about only 1/4 mile into the race!

The spasm started, the pain increased, I had to stop. 

Massage, stretch. Walk. Walk fast. Ooops, nope. Walk slow. 

All the niners were passing me. Then the tens.

I almost stopped for good. My first DNF. But one of the things that decidedly kept me going was that my car was over two miles away! The end of the race would take me right to it. What a hassle it would be to get back to it without getting in any runner's way. So, I kept going. I'm so glad I did.

What I learned:

It was a totally different experience in the back of the pack. People were joyful. Laughing. Hugging, high fiving spectators and other runners. Despite my pain and feeling foolish because I decided to run, I couldn't help but smile. I was reading the back of runner's shirts, the signs spectators were holding up along the route. There were some real funny ones, but for the life of me I can't remember any of them now.

Because I was going so slow, I stayed fresh the first half. That was remarkable. What a different feeling. I felt like I was a spectator instead of a runner. I felt like I had control.

A little past halfway through the course I started experimenting with my form. My left hip started to bother me because of the way I was compensating for decreased push off on the right. I opened up my swing to the rear, and kept my feet close to the ground. That seemed to give me a little bit more speed with less pain. I tried to hold on to that for as long as I could before I needed to slow down again.

Then I started passing people. It was very cool.

The pain turned into a dull ache. I was able to tuck it somewhere inside my head and give it a red button to push to let me know if I was being bad. 

Coming up on the clocks told me I was averaging a 10:00/mile. That was ok. At least I'm running it! At mile 2 I was 12:00/mile, so I was making up for lost time.

At mile 4 I knew I could not PR. 

But, I was still passing people who passed me 2 miles back.

My calf was still holding out. No alarm sounding yet. At about 4.5 I was getting excited that I was able to increase my pace. My heart rate shot up over 180.  I willed myself to slow down. I do not like my heart rate that high. But, the runners were thinning out as I got closer to the end.

A half mile from the finish, we were shuttled back into the park and on the path. The pack started to thicken up as the path narrowed, and people started to barrel past and ahead.  As soon as I started to pick up my own pace - the alarm went off. I could not go any faster without eliciting increased pain. It wasn't worth it. I was already slower than my first 10k - it made no difference at this point. I stuck with it, and came out still on my feet. When I looked at the finish line clock, I think it said 1:02:xx. That's 4 minutes behind my last. 

Ahh.. I could have done worse.

They had kiosks that you could punch your bib number into and it would give you your results. I thought that was neat. I never saw that  before.  Mine had no results on them! Ruh roh.

When I got home, it was interesting that Kira, my shepherd, was very caught up in what was going on with my calf. I had put no ointment on my leg at all, but yet she was very concerned with it. I've heard of dogs sniffing out cancer, so I wonder if she was sniffing out the physiologic changes that were taking place? By the time I got to my camera, she had already been sniffing for quite a while.

Curious.

I thought I turned Runmeter off when I crossed the finish, but no. So, error.

Magellan worked well.

I guess I'll lay off running for a week or two, and start lifting /walking.
If I don't feel better, I'll look to try to get an MRI to see what's up.

Next year, the LI Half.
This race was done well. We honored Boston for 26 seconds before the  start. There were 3 races going at the same time. Directions were clear. Plenty of security before, during, and at the finish. I felt safe.

And there really is something to this idea of starting slow...

Official Time:
1:00:33  9:44 pace (only 2 minutes over) :)
18/60  Age group
274/906  Females
617/1526 Overall



Magellan Data
Runmeter Data